While corporate movement towards encrypting more data affords in-house counsel with necessary protections around external communications, the shift may also pose challenges for investigations and e-discovery.In a Venafi survey conducted among 918 security professionals in attendance at the 2017 RSA Conference, two-thirds of respondents said their organizations are considering expanding their use of encryption, with only 29 percent confident in their current ability to protect communications and sensitive data. And given the confidential information regularly handled by in-house attorneys, particularly when communicating with outside counsel, legal departments may be benefactors of this trend.Eleanor Lacey, senior vice president and general counsel at network security company Sophos, told Corporate Counsel that her department uses encryption multiple times a day when emailing sensitive data to outside counsel.“For documents, I'm asked, ‘Do you want to set a password?’ and so I do encrypt. I’ll give the law firms the password in another way, obviously not in that email,” she said.The need for such secure communications was highlighted in early 2017 when U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York disclosed that two M&A law firms were infiltrated by Chinese nationals who profited off of confidential information the firms were holding. Such infiltrations are not uncommon among legal professionals, where attorneys are likely to be targeted by cyberattacks and email phishing scams.In addition to a considering more encryption, the Venafi survey found that corporations are likely to implement “absolute encryption,” which does not allow backdoor access for authorized users such as law enforcement agencies. Seventy-two percent of those surveyed expressed more concern over such access when compared to the past year. While securing data more completely, the use of absolute encryption may expose a corporation to costly legal battles and operational encumbrances should the U.S. government obtain a search warrant for information the company cannot easily unlock. When such encryption is used on personal devices outside of a corporation’s control, it also may also create challenges for attorneys and e-discovery practitioners when performing investigations or producing user data for litigation.Read the whole article in: www.legaltechnews.com 
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